As many of you will know I’m no longer working on development of my Alternate Reality:The City & The Dungeon remake, Alternate Reality X. This was written in C++ and used the SFML library and ran under Microsoft Windows. I may spend a bit of time to fix a few bugs with my last release (based on requests on the ARX forums), to leave the final release of ARX in a more playable and less buggy form.

From early 2018 an AR fan used my source code to put together a couple of revised builds of ARX (which are available for download from his website link below) . He has since created a brand new Java based Alternate Reality remake which I’ll refer to as the AR Java Edition to avoid confusion with my earlier ARX.

The AR Java Edition is a far more code complete remake of AR than my own ARX, based on the updates on his webpages. He’s finished a lot of the functionality which I hadn’t and has gone back to the original 6502 assembly language to better understand how the original games worked.You can check out the updates, videos and screenshots over at:

From his recent webpage updates it sounds like he’s now very close to a fully complete conversion of the City. Hopefully we’ll be able to try the Java Edition fairly soon.

As for myself I’ve started to put together a new CRPG project which is heavily inspired by the classic 8bit CRPGs of the 1980s. I’ve been learning a lot about old technology and systems and having a lot of fun in the process. More about this project shortly.

As many of you will be aware or guessed I have been dealing with some major changes in my life for some time now which meant I wasn’t posting on the blog or able to work on any game development. I won’t bore you with the details but despite still having some big challenges to deal with, I’m in a positive position and very happy. A big thanks to everyone who asked about me or sent me messages of support, these were greatly appreciated.

Due to those things going on in real life, Alternate Reality X (ARX) wasn’t getting the attention I wanted to give to it. I was also finding it hard to update the old code base which I originally began back in 2009!

Anyway, an enthusiastic AR fan has since built a new Java based Alternate Reality which you can read about here on his website. He hasn’t posted any updates for a couple of months but he has some videos of new features on the site and it looks like he’s added a lot of new features and functionality that were missing from ARX. Hopefully we will get to play the first Java edition of AR soon.

I’m planning some new, smaller game projects of my own in the coming months but I’ll post separately about those.

I’d been using an old PC for some time. It was several years old with a small case design for a specific motherboard / hardware combination and struggled with some of the fairly basic things I wanted to do including my game development. My son upgraded his PC over Christmas and gifted me his old motherboard and processor (pictured below) which I thought I would use as this would probably be a decent upgrade over my existing PC.

My existing PC case was no good so I thought I would use some Patreon and PayPal funds to buy an expandable PC case which I could use now and in the future and make use of my “new” motherboard and processor. I’d like to be able to use a full size video card at some point in the future, though it’s not essential for my current game development.

I looked at several case designs but opted for a CIT model I found on Amazon and ordered a 500W power supply to go with it. These arrived quickly and I was able to install everything without too many problems (though the power cables to the motherboard were a bit short). I transferred a couple of old hard drives into the handy caddies in the new case and my existing Windows 10 install booted up fine despite switching from an Intel to AMD processor / motherboard – an unexpected bonus. I also added a mini wi-fi dongle to the PC which is working great for networking compared to my old NetGear stick. The PC and case seem to be working really well and a nice upgrade from my old set up. The on-board AMD Radeon HD 8470D video is good after the old Intel graphics I was using.

There are still a few further upgrades I’ll buy at a later date such as a larger monitor (the 24″ one I have in my day job helps a lot) and a better chair (but not an expensive one). An SSD at some point would be great but this is way down my priority list.

In addition I spent time reorganising the room that I want to use for carrying out game development as it had become a dumping ground for the family and I could barely reach the desk – hardly conducive to productive game development! Still a bit crowded with other items but at least its tidy now. I need to do some negotiation with other family members to empty the room further so I can add a bit of storage for my game development notes, programming books etc.

Major thanks to those Patrons and PayPal supporters who’ve supported my efforts and helped fund some of these items. Greatly appreciated. The upgraded PC set up and improved working space will feed directly back into improving my game development output over the coming weeks and months.